As if awards from nearly all of the gaming community worldwide wasn’t enough, Spore is now also formally recognized by none other than Oprah Popular Mechanics. Spore has received the Breakthrough Product Award: Setting Benchmarks in Design, Creativity and Engineering at the fourth annual Breakthrough Awards in New York.

Spore is got this prestigious award because of its new process called procedural animation. Lucy Bradshaw, the general manager of Spore developer Maxis, had this to say, “We’re in great company with the other recipients of the Breakthrough Award. Procedural animation helps to bring Spore players’ creations to life through intuitive, realistic movement and we look forward to continuing to push the limits of this system in future Spore projects.”

To give fans an idea of the field Spore is being considered peers with in this, here are just two of the other recipients that were awarded. Rudy Roy, Ben Sexson, Daniel Oliver and Charles Pyott, graduates of the California Institute of Technology and the Art Center College of Design are being awarded for designing wheelchairs for impoverished nations out of used bicycles, which unlike other chairs can be repaired at any bike shop. Amyris Biotechnologies will be receiving for creating clean and renewable bio-diesel fuel from new microorganisms, which can help with global warming as well as petroleum shortages.

There are many others from the Pheonix Mars Mission to inventive ways to purify water and helping better the lives of people all over the world. We’re just glad that our industry could contribute.